Five Monster Bucks of All Time

April 12, 2016 By

Five Monster Bucks of All Time

By Patrick Kleinen

Unless your name is Tom Brady, the chances you’ll date a supermodel remain where they always were: zero. You also have no chance of taking even one small step in Neil Armstrong’s moon dust footprints. Or breaking Mariano Rivera’s saves record. So you can toss those dreams right in the old circular file.

But there is one transcendent achievement that, however remote it may be, still rattles around in your personal realm of possibility: You, my friend, could drop a 300-inch whitetail in its tracks.

While five wild bucks have achieved the 300-inch “Giga-Buck” level, only three of them have been hunter-killed while two more have rung the Boone & Crockett bell at 295 and change. And better yet, all five of those hunters were just regular joes like you and all your buddies up at deer camp. So, while it might be a long shot, at least it’s possible for you to step into the stratosphere of whitetail history the next time you hit the woods.

World of Whitetail host Ron Spomer knows all about the fever that fills hunters with big buck fantasies–and rack-envy. “Every year whitetail hunters scour the internet, running down rumors of the next freak to grow twice as much antler as most hunters ever see on a single buck. Silly? Perhaps. But the Guinness Book of World Records never goes out of style and neither do whitetails.”

Spomer knows a thing or two about big bucks–having slain whoppers on screen for years and traveled all over to take award-winning photos of them. His thoughts on if–or when– the next 300-incher will hit the ground?

“After roughly a century of regulated hunting seasons, the rate of antler growth seems to be accelerating,” Spomer says. “Three of the Big Five 300s were produced in the last decade alone. The sixth can’t be far behind.”

That kind of talk gets the heart palpitating a bit, doesn’t it? And Spomer’s not the only one who thinks the next Rackosauraus is just over the horizon. Jeff Brown, who’s a B&C Certified Scorer–and President of the Northeast Big Buck Club–sees a similar potential for more Giga-Bucks in the near future.

Trends such as fewer hunters, Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA) practices and more focus on managing ground to grow big whitetails increases the likelihood that most existing records will be challenged at some point soon,” Brown says. “We certainly have seen captive and genetically engineered whitetails grow bigger racks, but there is nothing natural about that. Unfortunately, as we have seen with the NBBC, there will also be some temptation to try and pass off genetically engineered bucks as record-breaking wild bucks.” As every record-keeping organization has proven over and over, the truth always comes out in the end as hoaxsters and flat-out liars never prosper. That’s what is so great about the five biggest whitetail bucks of all time: they’re all 100 percent legit. So let’s take a look at each of the Top Five hunter-killed Giga-Bucks in reverse order

Number➎Scott Dexter 295 3/8 B&C, Illinois, 2005, Muzzleloader

Dexter was hunting in the buck-rich farmlands of McDonough County, Illinois when the palmated 47-pointer he would nickname Rusty appeared in the middle of the afternoon and posed for a clean shot. It was the last day of shotgun season and Dexter was out there with his muzzleloader so he gets extra credit for that–along with the fact that this was the only shooter buck he’d seen all season. With stickers, drops and unreal points and tines all over the place, Rusty racks up 127 inches of nontypical tine length to form antlers that look like a cross between a whitetail and a red stag with a little woodland caribou thrown in for good measure.

Number➍Tony Fulton – 295 6/8 B&C, Mississippi, 1995, Rifle

He’s just a good ol’ boy. Never meanin’ no harm. Maybe that’s why Mississippi’s Tony Fulton went against his instincts and actually listened to his wife when she told him to go hunting. Shortly after Fulton climbed into the treehouse he built for his son, his Giga-Buck strode out into the field and froze at 50 yards. One shot from his .30-06 was followed by a tough tracking job but finished with a 48-pointer on the ground. Big scooping palms shape the rack that has funky points curling upward and outward along with several drops and stickers. Adding to the loner mystique that many associate with freak bucks, this was the only deer sighted from that treehouse all season. But it was a good ‘un.

Number➌Jerry Bryant 304 3/8 B&C, Illinois, 2001, Crossbow

The first 300-incher on this hunter-killed list, the aptly-named Bryant Giant, is nothing if not a sight to behold–with everything on it. A dazzling 36-pointer with long sweeping mainbeams, double-stacked rows of 10-inch tines on each side and brow points that look like the big spoon and fork you serve salad with at the company picnic. Add the fact that Jerry shot this historic Giga-Buck as a disabled hunter with a crossbow (ruptured arm ligaments due to a farming injury) and it’s not that hard to set aside the envy we all feel and just give this guy a well-earned round of applause. Shot in that big-buck-heaven known as Fulton County, Illinois, Bryant was actually hunting turkeys when his destiny collided with the colossus that would make him famous.

Number➋Timothy Beck, 305 7/8 B&C, Indiana, 2012, Shotgun

So just how does a deer get up to 305 inches? Yes, yes, age, nutrition, genetics. We know. But what’s it take for a rack to rack up a score like that? Well, in the case of Timothy Beck’s buck, all it took was 30-inch mainbeams, 13-inch browtines (give or take a few eighths), an inside spread of 23-plus inches, 93 7/8 inches of abnormal points (there were 26 of them) and base circumferences of 6 3/8. That’s all. Thirty-seven points in total, this incredible Indiana Gargantua had more than 100 inches on the left side and 97 6/8 on the right. With just 10 4/8 of deductions, this buck is a marvel of symmetry. And, considering the world class goofy grin on Tim Beck’s face in his grip-and-grin hero shot, this beast was taken by a Regular Joe we can all be proud of.

Number➊Tony Lovstuen, 307 5/8 B&C, Iowa, 2003, Muzzleloader

If you’re a rack-junky, you knew about the ‘walking world record buck’ before he bit the dust behind the bullet of 15-year old Tony Lovstuen. That’s because trailcam photos and shed antlers were living proof that an Ultra-Giga-Buck was walking around Monroe County, Iowa–most of the time on the Lovstuen’s home turf. To get the drop on everybody else who was angling to bang this incomparable buck, those cagey Lovstuen’s had young Tony suit up for the September youth season. The plan worked as young Tony launched a poorly-placed-but-killing shot from his muzzleloader–which set off a stressful tracking job with an earth-shaking ending. With incredible mass throughout plus 38 tines of every shape and kind, this incredible animal sits atop the whitetail world as the biggest hunter-killed buck of all time.

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